SPOILER ALERT: Dissecting Episode 2 of Lost‘s Last Season

Lost — and Temple-sidekick Lennon’s bare feet — hit the ground running last night. Let’s do the same! And yes, if you didn’t see Tuesday’s episode, beware of spoilers!

The episode was entitled “What Kate Does,” a nod to a second-season installment called “What Kate Did,” in which viewers found out that the crime the feisty fugitive had committed was murdering her lecherous father. Alas, we got no clear-cut answer from Sideways Kate, though perhaps we got a couple of clues. She told the mechanic she paid to help her out of her handcuffs that she was “wanted for murder” — not that she’d “committed” it — something that seems significant considering her later question to Claire: “Would you believe me if I said I was innocent?” Could Kate-On-the-Run 2.0 actually be guilt-free? We know deviations from Lost history are possible in this new topsy-turvy timeline. If she is guilt-free, what might that tell us about the still-murky connection between the Island and Sideways worlds?

Another interesting thing about Kate: For much of the time we’ve known her, she’s been running away, yet last night she ran towards something — or more accurately, some one. On the Island, that person was Sawyer, who was so ravaged by grief that he pulled a gun on the Temple peeps and fled to the home he’d shared with late love Juliet. What did Kate plan to do when she found him? “I guess we’ll figure that out together,” she told Jin in a moment that surely made Skate fans cheer. But a teary Sawyer wasn’t in the mood to figure out anything with the woman he once called Freckles. “I think some of us are meant to be alone,” he said, just before pitching the engagement ring he’d planned to give Juliet into the water. Surely, that’s just the poor guy’s grief talking … right?

Meanwhile, in the flash-sideways, Kate ran towards a pregnant stranger (a.k.a. Claire), whom she went back to help after initially shooing her out of the hijacked cab sans money and luggage. Kate not only accompanied Claire to find out why the couple planning to adopt her baby failed to pick her up from the airport — husband left wife, who couldn’t see raising a kid alone — but took her to Angel of Mercy Hospital after she went into premature labor.

Did you notice the date on Claire’s ultrasound film? Oct. 22, 2004 — exactly one month after Oceanic 815 crashed in the original timeline. But that wasn’t the only surprise. Claire’s doctor turned out to be none other than Ethan, the Other who had kidnapped her on the Island with the intention of stealing her baby! Only now, the creepy dude who couldn’t get enough of shooting the mom-to-be up with drugs at the DHARMA Staff station couldn’t be nicer — or more stingy with his prescription pad. “I just don’t wanna have to stick you with needles if I don’t have to,” he said.

If Ethan was different, so was on-Island Claire — who appeared for the first time since vanishing during season 4. With her stringy hair, dirty face and wild-eyed expression, she didn’t look unlike Rousseau, the now-dead French woman who was also once ripped away from her child. Was Claire the one who picked up where Rousseau left off setting traps? What does she plan to do with Jin, who got caught in one? Did she mean to protect Jin by shooting two Others — or did she even recognize him? After all, according to Dogen, the Island Claire we knew is gone, claimed by “a darkness.”

That was just one tasty morsel the Japanese-speaking Temple leader dished out Tuesday night. After torturing former torturer Sayid, Dogen gave Jack some answers. He was brought to the Island “like everyone else,” a comment that seemed to hint at destiny and one which Jack, feeling burned by destiny, didn’t seem ready to hear. And Sayid is not fully Sayid, which is why Dogen tried to off him with a pill that looked like harmless Echinacea, but was really poison. –Shawna Malcom

Tell us: Can the infected Sayid be saved? Or is the smoky dark Locke Monster en route to stake his claim?Mario Perez/ABC

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